offered him the chief
editorship at three thousand a year. He was eager to accept. My
beseechings and reasonings went for nothing. I said,

"You are as weak as water. Those people will find it out right away.
They will easily see that you have no backbone; that they can deal with
you as they would deal with a slave. You may last six months, but not
longer. Then they will not dismiss you as they would dismiss a
gentleman: they will fling you out as they would fling out an intruding
tramp."

It happened just so. Then he and his wife migrated to Keokuk once more.
Orion wrote from there that he was not resuming the law; that he thought
that what his health needed was the open air, in some sort of outdoor
occupation; that his father-in-law had a strip of ground on the river
border a mile above Keokuk with some sort of a house on it, and his idea
was to buy that place and start a chicken-farm and provide Keokuk with
chickens and eggs, and perhaps butter--but I don't know whether you can
raise butter on a chicken-farm or not. He said the place could be had
for three thousand dollars cash, and I sent the money. He began to raise
chickens, and he made a detailed monthly report to me, whereby it
appeared that he was able to work off his chickens on the Keokuk people
at a dollar and a quarter a pair. But it also appeared that it cost a
dollar and sixty cents to raise the pair. This did not seem to
discourage Orion, and so I let it go. Meantime he was borrowing a
hundred dollars per month of me regularly, month by month. Now to show
Orion's stern and rigid business ways--and he really prided himself on
his large business capacities--the moment he received the advance of a
hundred dollars at the beginning of each month, he always sent me his
note for the amount, and with it he sent, _out of that money, three
months' interest_ on the hundred dollars at six per cent. per annum,
these notes being always for three months.

As I say, he always sent a detailed statement of the month's profit and
loss on the chickens--at least the month's loss on the chickens--and
this detailed statement included the various items of expense--corn for
the chickens, boots for himself, and so on; even car fares, and the
weekly contribution of ten cents to help out the missionaries who were
trying to damn the Chinese after a plan not satisfactory to those
people.

I think the poultry experiment lasted about a year, possibly two years.
It had then cost m